"We're captive to this culture of relativism. There's no truth, so who
are we to impose our values on anyone else? All anybody can do -- like
a business school teacher -- is help people think through problems and
arrive at their own conclusions while telling them that no conclusion
is any better than any other -- a formula for disaster. This is what modern
worldviews teach. But what happens when you allow people to arrive at
their own moral conclusions? They do what is right in their own eyes,
and we end up with the likes of Enron and WorldCom." -- Charles Colson

"Freedom, by definition, includes freedom to do good or evil, to act
nobly or basely. Thus we should not be surprised that there is a considerable
amount of vice, licentiousness, and vulgarity in a free society. Given
the warped timber of humanity, freedom becomes a forum for the expression
of human flaws and weaknesses. But if freedom brings out the worst in
people, it also brings out the best. The millions of Americans who live
decent, praiseworthy lives deserve our highest admiration because they
have opted for the good when the good is not the only available option.
Even amidst the temptations that a rich and free society offers, they
have remained on the straight path. Their virtue has special luster because
it is freely chosen. The free society does not guarantee virtue, any more
than it guarantees happiness. But it allows for the pursuit of both, a
pursuit rendered all the more meaningful and profound because success
is not guaranteed, it has to be won through personal striving." -- Dinesh
D'Souza

"The crisis in the markets is as much about moral meltdown as it is bad
business practices. Too many high-flying CEOs have been willing to engage
in massive fraud, to lie, cheat and steal to get ahead. ...Our economic
system depends on honesty, on an underlying morality, on public confidence
in the truth of market information." -- Ken Connor

"No corporation on earth comes close to the accounting fraud practiced
year after year by the federal government." -- Rep. Ron Paul

"The history of liberty is largely the history of the observance of procedural
safeguards. The existence of so many bogus civil liberty concerns should
not blind us to real ones." -- Maggie Gallagher

"Apparently the only thing which will mollify the Democrats in Congress
is for the U.S. government to take control of each and every activity
of each and every corporation in the United States. Been there. Done that.
Didn't work out so well. We called it: 'The Soviet Union'." -- Rich Galen

"What Americans can do is start demanding more of all their leaders --
ethics from businessmen, morality from church leaders, vision from politicians
and depth from them all." -- Larry Seaquist

"The temptation of some greedy CEOs is personal enrichment. But the temptation
of many politicians is political survival." -- Cal Thomas

"The FBI should stick to fighting crime, and leave public relations to
the Chamber of Commerce and political correctness to the ACLU." -- Debra
Saunders

"Since September 11th, some congressional Democrats have imitated chameleons,
altering their observable ideological coloration for tactical political
advantage. Like their reptilian counterparts, the motivation has been
simple: Survival." -- Frank J. Gaffney, Jr.

"Lost in all the outrage over the corporate accounting scandals is one
fact politicians do not like to acknowledge: The auditing problems at
American companies cannot rival the bookkeeping shambles of the world's
largest enterprise -- the U.S. government. Exaggerated earnings, disguised
liabilities, off-budget shenanigans -- they are all there in the government's
ledgers on a scale even the biggest companies could not dream of matching."
-- Martin Crutsinger

"I think it'd be nice if some of the political opponents would stop taking
potshots at the president for things that started long before he came
into office." -- Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY), responding to Democrats' salvos
against Bush and Cheney's ties to big business amid the growing number
of recent corporate scandals -- most of which have their roots under the
Clinton regime

"A Zogby International poll of college seniors came up with a fascinating
finding. Almost all of the 401 randomly selected students around the country
-- 97% -- said their college studies had prepared them to behave ethically
in their future work lives. So far so good. But 73% of the students said
that when their professors taught about ethical issues, the usual message
was that uniform standards of right and wrong don't exist ('What is right
and wrong depends on differences in individual values and cultural diversity')."
-- John Leo

"If you keep emulating Clinton, eventually you become Clinton." -- Rep.
Tom Tancredo

"I would bet you that I can find you 4,000, 5,000 FBI agents who wish
to God they weren't assigned to Whitewater, Monicagate, Bill Clinton --
that instead they were on the trail of Osama bin Laden and the people
who were plotting mass murder against us." -- Geraldo Rivera, forgetting
Bill Clinton's role in hunting down Osama bin Laden

"There's no harm in this rhetoric, but it is naïve to suppose that business
can be regulated by some kind of national honor code." -- Washington Post
editorial in response to President Bush's assertion, "There is no capitalism
without conscience; there is no wealth without character."

"In South Africa, we call it Apartheid. In Nazi Germany, we'd call it
fascism. Here in the United States, we call it conservatism." -- The Reverend
Jesse Jackson's insights into the momentum of the American political culture

"The job comes with a salary and health care benefits for her and her
partner, and they are entitled to that benefit. I'm not going into specifics
... whatever their medical needs are, they're entitled to have them covered
under the city's health plan just as any other families on the city payroll."
-- Vernon C. Grigg III, attorney for San Francisco elections head Tammy
Haygood, fired from her position somewhat shy of tenure, who is seeking
reinstatement and restoration of health benefits especially to cover medical
procedures for the female-to-male sex change that will make her partner
her "husband"

"There are going to be some happy rats tonight." -- Louisville's Metropolitan
Sewer District director Bud Schardein, after Southern Comfort distillery
spilled 1,500 gallons of the liquor down the drain.

"So, Your Honor, the Pledge is unconstitutional because it says 'Under
God'. Guess that means when you were sworn in with your hand on a Bible,
and at the end of your oath repeated, 'So Help Me God' that makes your
job unconstitutional, therefore you have no job, which means your ruling
doesn't mean anything." -- Dennis Miller addressing the U.S. 9th Circuit
Court

"They'll stoop to anything to win, those Republicans, even quote
their opponents." -- Ann Coulter

"I went to a new 99-cent store today -- Wall Street!" -- Jay
Leno

"Janet Reno will host a Miami fund-raiser called Janet Reno's Dance
Party. She has a new dance named after her. You put your right hand over
your right eye, you put your left hand over your left eye, and then you
clear Al Gore of all wrongdoing." -- Argus Hamilton

web
posted July 15, 2002

"It [the International Criminal Court] puts American servicemen and women
at fundamental risk of being tried by an entity that is beyond America's
reach, beyond America's laws, and can subject American civilian and military
to arbitrary standards of justice." -- Ari Fleischer, the President's
press secretary, observing that the ICC is a serious threat to U.S. sovereignty

"All investment is an act of faith, and faith is earned by integrity.
In the long run, there's no capitalism without conscience; there is no
wealth without character." -- President George W. Bush

"Our politics suffers from a shortage of people who put character and
country before career and personal gain." -- Cal Thomas

"Trust is one of those things that is much easier to maintain than it
is to repair." -- Thomas Sowell

"In the legal arena, material misrepresentations of fact are called 'fraud.'
In Washington, such misrepresentations are called 'politics'." -- Ken
Connor

"While Tom Daschle is on his mission to try get SOMETHING to stick to
President Bush, we are seeing the clear signs of the...Democrats returning
to their roots -- anti-business, class warfare." -- Rich Galen

"There is something to be said for popular abolition of the death penalty;
there is nothing to be said for its incremental abolition by this court."
-- Justice Antonin Scalia

"If they [foreign entrants] have visas and are from Iran, Iraq, Libya,
Sudan or Syria, they now pose national security concerns and must be fingerprinted
and photographed. ...It's a little like the search for communists in the
government after World War II." -- CNN's Bruce Morton

"He may be alive. If he is, we'll get him. If he's not alive, we got
him." -- U.S. President George W. Bush when asked if Osama bin Laden was
still alive

"If this sounds like Mr. Bush has come down squarely on Israel's side
in the Israeli-Palestinian struggle, that is how it looks in the Middle
East and in Washington." -- Peter Jennings on the President's peace plan,
perhaps playing dumb

"I am a liberal, which means I believe in dissent and I believe in listening
to others." -- PBS's Bill Moyers

"[I] would spend more time speaking from the heart [on] the basic challenges
of the country." -- Albert Gore responding to a query about running in
2004

"A liberal judge who finds God unconstitutional is precisely the stuff
of which Republican dreams and Democratic nightmares are made." -- Jonah
Goldberg

"There are enough fools in Washington to destroy the country without
any help from Muslim terrorists." -- Paul Craig Roberts

"Remember the good old days when a guy ran for president and lost and
you never heard from him again?" -- Greg Crosby

"Bill Clinton has still got some of us snowed, and the younger, the more
snowable. Actually, a piece by Bill Clinton on the law and how to get
around it might have been of considerable interest. Much like a piece
by Willie Sutton in a banking journal. It would have had a True Confessions
kind of appeal." -- Paul Greenberg

"Julian Bond is in rare form as the NAACP convention opens in Houston,
Texas. Bush this ... right-wingers that ... racism this, that and the
other thing. The same tired old 'we're so picked on' story, Chapter 342."
-- Neal Boortz

"The geniuses at WorldCom, Arthur Andersen, Enron (remember them?), Global
Crossing, and Qwest have done for top executives at major corporations
what Monica Lewinsky did for White House interns." -- Rich Galen

"The first case of mad cow disease has been discovered in Israel.
Gee, I hope this doesn't make any people in the Middle East go crazy!"
-- Jay Leno

"Janet Reno announced ... she will hold a Janet Reno's Dance Party
in Miami based on the Saturday Night Live sketch about her. This can only
mean one thing. After leading the War on Drugs for eight years, she has
gone over to the other side." -- Argus Hamilton

web
posted July 1, 2002

"Whiny parents wonder why public schools have abandoned standards,
forsaken accountability and adopted appeasement as their primary educational
mission. Oh, who could be to blame for such an abysmal abdication of responsibility?
Who?" -- Michelle Malkin

"The civil liberties of foreigners is not a concern, but when things
done to them set a dangerous precedent for American citizens, we need
to proceed with caution, if at all. There is no magical line in the Constitution
that divides citizens and non-citizens or protects us from the Orwellian
tactics imposed on them. Establishing an enormous system for the purpose
of storing personally identifiable information and tracking people's every
move lays the political and technical foundation for a national ID card.
Anyone who doesn't think so has taken a few too many puffs from the peace
pipe." -- Joel Mowbray

"Prohibiting citizens from banding together to express their political
opinions in the public marketplace of ideas would have been unthinkable
to America's Founding Fathers." -- Ken Connor

"I fully expect this outrageous [circuit court] decision will be overturned
by the Supreme Court, and in the meantime, call on these liberal judges
to stop accepting their taxpayer paychecks as they are no doubt offended
by the words 'In God We Trust' on all U.S. currency." -- Georgia Republican
Rep. Bob Barr

"Make sure the government treats others the same as you would want the
government to treat you. ...Once you consent to the government ignoring
the Constitution, you deny yourself the protection of the Constitution."
-- Charley Reese

"Americans have also only begun to understand that if radical Islam is
one face of our enemy, the other is the radical Left." -- David Horowitz

"It was the Israelis who sympathized with the murder of 3,000 of our
citizens. It was the Palestinians celebrating and dancing in the streets."
-- Rush Limbaugh

"Statehood before peace is guaranteed to increase the violence." -- Charles
Krauthammer

"I've been here 18 years and I can say with total confidence that there's
no special interest that completely owns, lock stock, the Republican conference.
But, by golly, I think the Democrats in the Senate are a wholly owned
subsidiary of [the Association of Trial Lawyers of America]. They ought
to be embarrassed." -- Sen. Mitch McConnell

"On occasion we make mistakes but that's not because there's any bias.
CNN is not pro-Palestinian or anti-Israeli. We're fair, we're responsible
in our reporting, we try to be as accurate as we possibly can be." --
CNN news chief Eason Jordan, apologizing on Israel Television for his
network's provision of far more time to the families of homicide bombers
than to the families of those they are murdering

"People [were] running around spending those [Bush tax refund] checks
to spur on the economy and it's money the government can't afford." --
NBC's Matt Lauer on tax reductions. The government can't afford it?

"He disgusts me. And I know I'm not supposed to say this because I'm
a good Democrat, but I didn't want to [talk] to him because he lied to
me when he said, 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman,' and
then put the scarlet-letter b*****b on her for the rest of her life. I
still hate you!" -- Rosie O'Donnell on Bill Clinton

"Opponents of the death penalty are heralding the Supreme Court ruling
last week banning the ultimate penalty in cases involving defendants with
IQ's less than 70...which, some...might suggest, gives Democrats a license
to kill." -- ACU's Chuck Muth

"Hillary Clinton, they say, has put on 30 pounds since she's been a Senator.
In fact, she has gotten so heavy that today Bill hit on her." -- David
Letterman

"If Richard Nixon's presidency was the stuff of tragedy, Bill Clinton's
was closer to farce. ... Bill Clinton's great contribution to the presidency
was to trivialize it, to turn it into a Hollywood production." -- Paul
Greenberg

"We will miss him.... Anyone who is despised by the like of Garrison
Keillor can't be all bad." -- Wall Street Journal on Jesse Ventura's decision
to leave after just one term

"As the number of incompetent Palestinian suicide bombers suggests, in
this [terrorism] field it's hard, by definition, to get people with experience."
-- Mark Steyn

"...[L]ooking at the newly hired luggage inspectors, we might be safer
if the passengers frisked the inspectors, rather than vice versa." --
Jackie Mason & Raoul Felder

"Scientists in England say they have invented a cell phone so small
that it can be placed in a tooth by a dentist. Isn't that amazing -- I
didn't know England had dentists!" -- Jay Leno

"The FBI warned ... a boatload of al-Qa'ida fighters is sailing
toward Los Angeles to attempt a beach landing. No one's worried. This
is Los Angeles, and the moment they try to land, they will be driven back
into the sea by Crip gunfire." -- Argus Hamilton